Words of wisdom: If you're gonna do something illegal, do NOT brag on social media.

/signed

Though I would really like to know how much information they had to get this many warrants issued. Given that only 1/6 of the people targeted were actually charged it seems like these warrants were on some pretty flimsy information. I think it's reasonable to expect a better warrant to charges ratio than this, otherwise warrants stop being meaningful.

The other interesting thing is how far Facebook went to try not to give this information. For a company commonly demonized for not respecting user privacy it's more than I expected.

Clear fishing expedition if so few were charged in the end. Also a few photos is not going to hold up, perhaps if there were a sequence of status updates, photo metadata etc backing up that they were actually skiing. But from their behaviour i'm sceptical they are even going to successfully prosecute 1/6 of those charged let alone avoid having all their facebook "evidence" thrown out.

EDIT: Actually skiing at a time after they were injured. I was thinking well its pretty easy to go through your old holiday photos and upload them if you are a facebook sharer. Without location, meta, and postings etc its just an old picture.

Words of wisdom: If you're gonna do something illegal, do NOT brag on social media.

/signed

Though I would really like to know how much information they had to get this many warrants issued. Given that only 1/6 of the people targeted were actually charged it seems like these warrants were on some pretty flimsy information.

Or maybe the other 5 out of 6 people were smart enough to not post pictures on social media. I'm not saying that they're guilty or that the evidence met the requirements of probable cause, just that the 1 out of 6 measure doesn't mean that all of the others are innocent.

Words of wisdom: If you're gonna do something illegal, do NOT brag on social media.

/signed

Though I would really like to know how much information they had to get this many warrants issued. Given that only 1/6 of the people targeted were actually charged it seems like these warrants were on some pretty flimsy information. I think it's reasonable to expect a better warrant to charges ratio than this, otherwise warrants stop being meaningful.

The other interesting thing is how far Facebook went to try not to give this information. For a company commonly demonized for not respecting user privacy it's more than I expected.

Well, the feds weren't exactly paying for that data. That kind of user information isn't cheap.

In reading the NYT article it looks like the main concern is the breadth of the warrants:

Quote:

Lee Rowland, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the breadth of the search warrants, which had no time limits or any limits on topics, was troubling. It strains belief, she said, that every posting, picture and message in the Facebook files turned over to the state were necessary to the case.

Quote:

“The government’s bulk warrants, which demand ‘all’ communications and information in 24 broad categories from the 381 targeted accounts, are the digital equivalent of seizing everything in someone’s home. Except here, it is not a single home but an entire neighborhood of nearly 400 homes,” Facebook wrote in a brief to the appeals court. “The vast scope of the government’s search and seizure here would be unthinkable in the physical world.”

From the scant information in the article, it sounds like the court was basically saying that Facebook was nothing more than the container to which the search warrant was being applied. Just as a house can't contest a search warrant in court, so also Facebook has no right to contest a search warrant as they are not the affected party, but rather a storage location within which the affected party has deposited the information of interest.

Words of wisdom: If you're gonna do something illegal, do NOT brag on social media.

/signed

Though I would really like to know how much information they had to get this many warrants issued. Given that only 1/6 of the people targeted were actually charged it seems like these warrants were on some pretty flimsy information.

Or maybe the other 5 out of 6 people were smart enough to not post pictures on social media. I'm not saying that they're guilty or that the evidence met the requirements of probable cause, just that the 1 out of 6 measure doesn't mean that all of the others are innocent.

If Facebook posts are to be the primary source of information for them to go to trial with, then I would suggest they need to do better investigations. The social media postings should be one part of the evidence story, not the only source.

IANAL, but since this is a search being executed against Facebook, I can't see how they don't have standing to challenge it. I thought standing mainly meant something affected you directly, so both Facebook and anyone targeted by the search should have standing to challenge it.

From the scant information in the article, it sounds like the court was basically saying that Facebook was nothing more than the container to which the search warrant was being applied. Just as a house can't contest a search warrant in court, so also Facebook has no right to contest a search warrant as they are not the affected party, but rather a storage location within which the affected party has deposited the information of interest.

No, that would be civil forfeiture to assume they have no rights.

Standing is a different beast in my understanding, though it is most commonly seeming to be in the "Let the .gov do whatever the fuck it wants" category because they can't actually come up with a reason to defend their actions.

So let me get this straight the lower court claimed that only the people effected could fight the warrants so FB had no grounds. They also (I'm assuming it was them) issued a gag order so FB couldn't tell the people effected because then they would know about them.

So basically in order for the people targeted to fight this they need to be physic?

From the scant information in the article, it sounds like the court was basically saying that Facebook was nothing more than the container to which the search warrant was being applied. Just as a house can't contest a search warrant in court, so also Facebook has no right to contest a search warrant as they are not the affected party, but rather a storage location within which the affected party has deposited the information of interest.

No, that would be civil forfeiture to assume they have no rights.

Standing is a different beast in my understanding, though it is most commonly seeming to be in the "Let the .gov do whatever the fuck it wants" category because they can't actually come up with a reason to defend their actions.

In law, standing or locus standi is the term for the ability of a party to demonstrate to the court sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case. Standing exists from one of three causes:

1. The party is directly subject to an adverse effect by the statute or action in question, and the harm suffered will continue unless the court grants relief in the form of damages or a finding that the law either does not apply to the party or that the law is void or can be nullified. This is called the "something to lose" doctrine, in which the party has standing because they directly will be harmed by the conditions for which they are asking the court for relief.

2. The party is not directly harmed by the conditions by which they are petitioning the court for relief but asks for it because the harm involved has some reasonable relation to their situation, and the continued existence of the harm may affect others who might not be able to ask a court for relief. In the United States, this is the grounds for asking for a law to be struck down as violating the First Amendment, because while the plaintiff might not be directly affected, the law might so adversely affect others that one might never know what was not done or created by those who fear they would become subject to the law – the so-called "chilling effects" doctrine.

3. The party is granted automatic standing by act of law. Under some environmental laws in the United States, a party may sue someone causing pollution to certain waterways without a federal permit, even if the party suing is not harmed by the pollution being generated. The law allows them to receive a portion of any fines collected by the government from their violation of law. In some U.S. states, a person who believes a book, film or other work of art is obscene may sue in their own name to have the work banned directly without having to ask a District Attorney to do so.

Given facebook's and other IT companies repeated scrutiny by customers over privacy, it seems that handing over data without client knowledge adversely affects facebook. This action caused harm to people that were not able to seek a court for relief due to the gag order.

I think the real problem here is that some people seem to think that Facebook is private. This is not the case. Regardless of your permissions you're giving your data to a 3rd party expressly for sharing that information and as such you need to view it as public information.

Me personally, I'd just be happy they caught those 62 fraudsters. That sort of fraud costs everyone a lot of money.

IANAL, but since this is a search being executed against Facebook, I can't see how they don't have standing to challenge it. I thought standing mainly meant something affected you directly, so both Facebook and anyone targeted by the search should have standing to challenge it.

I think the argument is that Facebook wasn't, itself, warranted; the people were, Facebook just happened to be the venue.

I can see how that reasoning came about, but I don't think I like it. I mean, while the police could arrest someone at work without a warrant against the workplace, my understanding is they'd have to have a unique warrant to search the person's desk. If so, I would think the same would hold true for Facebook (and other related services).

IANAL, but since this is a search being executed against Facebook, I can't see how they don't have standing to challenge it. I thought standing mainly meant something affected you directly, so both Facebook and anyone targeted by the search should have standing to challenge it.

Yeah I'm wondering about this too. How can you be legally able to be searched by a warrant, but not legally able to challenge it? That's absurd.

For the "Facebook is a container" argument, it doesn't really matter because it's stored on their servers. If I put a box in my neighbor's house, a search warrant for my house does not mean that box can be searched unless the neighbor's house is also included in the warrant. And I highly doubt the neighbor would be unable to contest a warrant to search their own house.

I think the real problem here is that some people seem to think that Facebook is private. This is not the case. Regardless of your permissions you're giving your data to a 3rd party expressly for sharing that information and as such you need to view it as public information.

Me personally, I'd just be happy they caught those 62 fraudsters. That sort of fraud costs everyone a lot of money.

The problem here is that if this was just publicly posted information that was a concern, they wouldn't need a warrant, now would they?

IANAL, but since this is a search being executed against Facebook, I can't see how they don't have standing to challenge it. I thought standing mainly meant something affected you directly, so both Facebook and anyone targeted by the search should have standing to challenge it.

I think the argument is that Facebook wasn't, itself, warranted; the people were, Facebook just happened to be the venue.

I can see how that reasoning came about, but I don't think I like it. I mean, while the police could arrest someone at work without a warrant against the workplace, my understanding is they'd have to have a unique warrant to search the person's desk. If so, I would think the same would hold true for Facebook (and other related services).

If i understand correctly, 'Work' could tell them they can search, since its 'Work' property. Or they could serve a warrent to 'Work' to search.

IANAL, but since this is a search being executed against Facebook, I can't see how they don't have standing to challenge it. I thought standing mainly meant something affected you directly, so both Facebook and anyone targeted by the search should have standing to challenge it.

Yeah I'm wondering about this too. How can you be legally able to be searched by a warrant, but not legally able to challenge it? That's absurd.

The people being charged will be able to challenge the warrants after the fact in court. They are the one's with standing since they are the one's being charged. The judge ruled that Facebook doesn't have standing because they are not directly harmed by the warrant, and what little indirect harm they would suffer is not enough to rise to the level of standing in this case. It would be like the phone company arguing that FBI can't tap the phones because it will discourage criminals from using the service.

IANAL, but since this is a search being executed against Facebook, I can't see how they don't have standing to challenge it. I thought standing mainly meant something affected you directly, so both Facebook and anyone targeted by the search should have standing to challenge it.

I think the argument is that Facebook wasn't, itself, warranted; the people were, Facebook just happened to be the venue.

I can see how that reasoning came about, but I don't think I like it. I mean, while the police could arrest someone at work without a warrant against the workplace, my understanding is they'd have to have a unique warrant to search the person's desk. If so, I would think the same would hold true for Facebook (and other related services).

If i understand correctly, 'Work' could tell them they can search, since its 'Work' property. Or they could serve a warrent to 'Work' to search.

Maybe, but in this case there was no warrant served against "Work" (Facebook) and they have not given permission. If the warrant was served to "Work" (Facebook) then they would have standing to contest that surely.

Given facebook's and other IT companies repeated scrutiny by customers over privacy, it seems that handing over data without client knowledge adversely affects facebook. This action caused harm to people that were not able to seek a court for relief due to the gag order.

Why didn't facebook have standing again?

I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just trying to figure out what the judge's reasoning was. All the article says is: "[we] were told by a lower court that as an online service provider we didn’t even have the legal standing to contest the warrants."

If that is accurate the judge seems to think that the status of being an online service provider is relevant to the question, so I surmised that the judge was seeing Facebook more like an inanimate container of information rather than an affected party.

IANAL, but I didn't need to go to law school to know this: The law is what a judge says the law is. And the judge in the next higher court, etc. While it is SUPPOSED to mater what the lawmakers say the law is, it really doesn't matter. The law is what the last judge in the chain says it is. If a judge says that you have no standing to challenge a warrant then you have no standing until a judge in a higher court says you do or you run out of courts or money to appeal. Sometimes this is a good thing. Sometimes it isn't.

BTW - FB could have stood up tot he court and accepted the contempt charges. Real journalists do this when they get bullied by the courts.

The thing is, these were all people who were specifically under investigation for fraud. It would be one thing if they chose 381 people at random or a broad subset of Facebook users, but presumably there was enough reasonable suspicion among them individually to justify a search warrant. In the physical world, not all search warrants lead to an immediate conviction either, but this is analogous to having 381 suspects coincidentally sharing a storage locker at the same location.

In reading the NYT article it looks like the main concern is the breadth of the warrants:

Quote:

Lee Rowland, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the breadth of the search warrants, which had no time limits or any limits on topics, was troubling. It strains belief, she said, that every posting, picture and message in the Facebook files turned over to the state were necessary to the case.

Quote:

“The government’s bulk warrants, which demand ‘all’ communications and information in 24 broad categories from the 381 targeted accounts, are the digital equivalent of seizing everything in someone’s home. Except here, it is not a single home but an entire neighborhood of nearly 400 homes,” Facebook wrote in a brief to the appeals court. “The vast scope of the government’s search and seizure here would be unthinkable in the physical world.”

This seems like part of the big benefit of the internet: allowing these guys to do their job on many people in parallel. 300 people sounds like they actually narrowed it down on some criteria, and didn't just try to lookup every single person who was receiving benefits. Before this they just wouldn't have investigated those 300 people because it wasn't economical, not because they didn't have 300 people with reasonable suspicion.

The thing is, these were all people who were specifically under investigation for fraud. It would be one thing if they chose 381 people at random or a broad subset of Facebook users, but presumably there was enough reasonable suspicion among them individually to justify a search warrant. In the physical world, not all search warrants lead to an immediate conviction either, but this is analogous to having 381 suspects coincidentally sharing a storage locker at the same location.

From the article:

Quote:

New York authorities said they have identified as many as 600 suspects and provided a state court with a 93-page affidavit supporting the individual warrants and maintained that all the data was relevant.

That's a darn sight more "due diligence" on the part of the investigators than has been seen in other examples, so on that count it seems more legit. On the other hand, though, since the investigators must have known when the injuries leading to the contested claims were alleged to have occurred, it's really hard to believe that all the users' data was relevant (as per the NYT article cited in another comment above).

So let me get this straight the lower court claimed that only the people effected could fight the warrants so FB had no grounds. They also (I'm assuming it was them) issued a gag order so FB couldn't tell the people effected because then they would know about them.

So basically in order for the people targeted to fight this they need to be physic?

I don't think it's normal to be able to fight a search warrant before it's executed.

If the cops show up at your house with a search warrant, you don't get a chance to read it over and decide whether you agree or not, and if you don't tell them to "go away" you're going to appeal.

You get a chance to challenge the warrant later, and if you win all of the evidence collected is thrown out.

Regarding the 62/381 I am pretty sure that the large size of the second number is related to family members and friends of the investigated. If I claim an injury and still go out to play rugby with my friends and he posts a pic of us scrumming the investigators will want a pic of that.

Now about FB being the good guy in this, hahahaha. I can think of at least two logical reasons why they would not want to give up this info.

First if people start to realize that their online information can be used by police they will be less likely to share. When people share less than FB has less oppty to cash in on selling their information.

Second, FB has concerns that by showing the government types how much access they have to everyone's information they might be hurt. This info could be sought after more often, it might be leaked how much FB knows about you and than see number the first.

And as long as a search warrant was used I have zero problems with this.

The warrants cover a cross-section of America: nearly 400 people, highschoolers to grandparents, from all over New York and across the United States.The warrants target electricians, school teachers, and members of our armedservices. See A104 (10/2/2013 Eckenwiler Aff., Ex. 1 at 10). They contain nodate-range limitations, no limitations on the content to be seized and examined bythe Government, and no procedures for the return of the seized information. SeeA9-10 (Search Warrant at 1-2). They demand information that cannot possibly berelevant to the crimes the Government presumably continues to investigate.Indeed, the main Facebook-related evidence presented publicly by the Governmentabout this matter consists of a handful of photographs of a fraction of the targetsacting in ways that are allegedly inconsistent with their claimed disabilities. TheGovernment’s own investigation thus confirms that most of the Facebook user dataseized by the Government is irrelevant to the charges alleged, and the searchwarrants are overbroad and constitutionally defective.